Kim Jong-un, Pakistan, Iran: Your Wednesday Briefing

South Korea is waiting to hear whether North Korea will agree to high-level talks next week, which Seoul proposed after an unexpected New Year’s outreach from the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un. It would be their first official dialogue in two years.

For hundreds of thousands like her, the horror isn’t over. More than half of the estimated 655,000 Rohingya refugees are minors, and perhaps one-third are younger than 5, like the girl being carried by her mother above. An aid official called it “the perfect breeding ground for a massive mental health crisis for children.”

Mr. Trump accused a former Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, of “disregarding basic security protocols,” and called his own Justice Department a “deep state,” a term that typically refers to a shadow government that plots to influence politics.

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• The reckoning over sexual harassment is reshaping U.S. culture.

Peter Martins, who led the New York City Ballet for more than three decades, stepped down, while rejecting accusations of harassment and physical and verbal abuse.

Gretchen Carlson, who spoke out against sexual harassment at Fox News, will lead the board of the Miss America pageant — a competition she won in 1989.

Addressing readers of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger explains his approach to the job in “a period of profound challenge,” when “misinformation is rising and trust in the media is declining.” Read his comments here.

In the News

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CreditRachel Nuwer

• China’s demand for donkey hides, to produce a traditional remedy called ejiao, is not only disrupting Africans’ livelihoods; some researchers see a potential crisis “throughout the rest of the world.” [The New York Times]

• An Australian former deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer, accused the U.S. of a “diplomatic insult” by failing to appoint an ambassador in Canberra for nearly 18 months. He also suggested tensions would worsen over an Australian diplomat’s role in setting off the U.S. investigations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. [The Sydney Morning Herald]

• “It was going down fast.” Would-be rescuers described desperate attempts to save those aboard a seaplane that crashed near Sydney, killing a British executive and five others. [ABC]

• Pakistan summoned the U.S. ambassador after President Trump accused its government of “lies & deceit.” [The New York Times]

• Japan’s foreign minister begins two days of meetings in Islamabad. [Pakistan Today]

• In Israel, an emboldened right wing is signaling its intention to doom a two-state Mideast solution. [The New York Times]

• “I was misguided.” A YouTube star with millions of followers apologized for posting a video that showed a dead body hanging from a tree in a Japanese forest known for suicides. [The New York Times]

• A dentist in Taiwan was ordered to pay his mother, who financed his education, nearly $1 million. [The New York Times]

They recalled a slightly less sentimental line from the strip’s debut, nearly 50 years earlier, in which a carefree Charlie Brown strolls by a pair of children.

“Good ol’ Charlie Brown,” one says. “How I hate him!”

That juxtaposition of earnestness and wry humor made “Peanuts” a pop-cultural mainstay for half a century, reaching 75 countries in 21 languages at its peak.

Mr. Schulz, shown above in 1966, insisted on producing every aspect of the comic, making himself inseparable from his characters.

“I want it to be my words in everything I do,” he told The Times in 1967. “I’ve thought of it — hiring someone to help. Sometimes I think it would be nice. But then — what would be the point?”

When colon cancer forced Mr. Schulz to end the daily strip in 2000 at age 77, The Times invoked a dismal Charlie Brown, mourning the end of the baseball season: “There’s a dreariness in the air that depresses me.”

Mr. Schulz died a month later, but all 17,897 “Peanuts” strips would be anthologized over the next two decades.